XCOM Enemy In Charge
by JohnsonR
Summary: An attempt to explain the weird but never mentioned gender balance in the XCOM world.
Operation Broken Dawn

After Action Report

SPEC Janet Smith Assault KIA

SGT Pyotr "Alpha" Dobrynin Rocketeer KIA

CPL Dieter "Stalker" Ulrich Sniper KIA

SPEC Barrett "Combo" Schneider Medic KIA

CPL Johanna "Strobe" Visser Engineer KIA

CPL Elena ""Ouija" Guseva Infantry KIA

"Sit down, Bradford. Let's get this done."

Central Officer John Bradford sat in front of the Commander's desk, and readied his file of papers. The only other person in the room was the Commander's Adjutant, Walt Smithers, who closed the door to the outer office and took his own place at the end of the desk.

"Another squad wipeout, Bradford. That's the second this month, and we're losing too many operatives even when we get a successful mission. We need to get to the bottom of this, and fast." The Commander paused, and looked at Bradford, but Bradford knew better than to chirp up too quickly. After a moment the Commander continued.

"What do we need to change, Bradford?"

"Sir, in my report…."

"I've read your report on Broken Dawn, Bradford. It seems to raise more questions than it answers. The operation starts going to pieces when Assault One gets sniped by a floater with a plasma pistol. But TacComp authorised Assault's run for that cover point. It calculated that he could make the distance a full second before that floater could get a line on him. Was he just lazy, slow off the mark, or do we have a physical training problem?"

"Sir, that's not really fair on Specialist Smith. There isn't a woman in the world that could cover that distance in the time TacComp calculated, even without full com-". Bradley stopped abruptly, as the Commander raised his hand, a frown creasing his brow.

"Specialist Janet Smith? Squad Three's Rocketeer? Squad Three's Assault is – was – Pyotr Dobrynin. I remember him, because he was runner up for Russian 100m sprint champion before he signed up for XCOM."

Bradford shifted uncomfortably, and barely suppressed an impulse to look around, guiltily, before responding. "Yes, sir. They, erm ….. they reassigned themselves."

The Commander's eyebrows shot up and he stared at Bradford. Then he looked over at his Adjutant who was taking notes. There was a lengthy pause. Finally, the Commander said, with heavy emphasis: "What?"

"They reassigned themselves. In the Skyranger. Smith gave the rockets to Dobrynin and he passed her the shotgun. And they swapped their monitor tags over, so TacComp had Dobrynin as Rocketeer and Smith as Assault, without realising it. They all swapped. I pulled the monitoring records from the Skyranger, and from the squad rooms. Ulrich gave the sniper rifle to Visser and took the grenades off her, and Schneider swapped his medikit for Guseva's LMG."

After another moment of silence, the Commander responded. "I guess that explains why the squad's Rocketeer and Sniper missed their shots when a pod of chrysalids showed up right on the floater's tail and gutted Schneider and Ulrich." He hesitated, clearly asking himself whether he really wanted to hear the answer to his next question. Finally he prompted Bradley to continue, with a terse query. "Why?"

Bradley shifted in his seat again. It was starting to feel uncomfortably hot in the Commander's office. He knew he was approaching the awkward stuff. "Smith couldn't carry the weight of the rockets, Guseva couldn't move the LMG fast enough and Visser couldn't get any distance on the grenades. She wasn't as good as Ulrich with the sniper rifle, but she was passable. And you remember Schneider – over two meters tall, the biggest guy I've ever seen. He never could operate that medikit properly. His fingers were too big." He swallowed, awkwardly. "They talked it over and agreed amongst themselves that their best chance of survival on the next mission would be to swap the gear over-". He stopped speaking, as the Commander cut across him sharply.

"Hold on there, Bradley. You're getting too close to hate speech for my liking." He turned to Smithers. "Walt, did you sweep the office again this morning?"

"Yes, sir. No new bugs, after the two we removed last week."

"I'm sure I don't need to remind you, Bradford, that such talk can be career ending these days. I see that none of this was in your written report, so at least you knew better than to hand the Grudges your own ass on a plate." The political officers, Gender and Race Justice Officers (GRJs), were universally known as Grudges on the base, though not within their own hearing.

"Sir, I'm just telling you how it is. We have a serious problem here. XCOM recruits the best of the best from military personnel all over the world, but the political rules insist we get recruits exactly proportioned to the global population, half men and half women, and then require roles to be assigned randomly without regard to physical capabilities. The women we get are highly competent soldiers, the best of the best. They're all in the top 0.1% of upper body strength for females, but that still means they are weaker than an baverage/b man, let alone the kind of guys we operate with. Sir, we ihave/i to start taking account of recruits' strength when we allocate roles to them. Even if…" Bradford gulped, knowing he was about to cross lines that could mean the end of his career. "Even if it means not allocating roles equally between men and women."

The Commander was staring at him as though he had turned into a poisonous snake right before his eyes. Smithers had stopped taking notes some time earlier and was looking vaguely queasy. After a few minutes of awkward silence, the Commander seemed to pull himself together, and turned to Smithers. "Walt, put that pen down." He turned back to Bradford, and sighed. "John, you can't really be expecting me to sanction anything like that, surely? You know what our funding is like. We answer to the whole world, and our biggest contributors are the United States of Europe. Their President's a woman, and since the French New Left got their candidate into office last month, every single head of state for the constituent countries is female now. Every one on my case, and every one a card carrying hard-assed, pant-suited, rug-". He cut himself off, with another guilty look over his shoulder at Smithers. "You remember what happened to my predecessor?"

"In fairness, sir, he did make a joke about the Prime Minister of Denmark's menstrual issues. In the company of not just one but two Grudges. He was asking for it, really." Smithers sounded as though he was trying to be reassuring. "Though admittedly five years in a penal battalion was pretty harsh."

The Commander laughed, somewhat unconvincingly. "And it's not just the Europeans. President Chelsea Clinton's administration isn't exactly soft on political ideology either. We're under investigation already by the Internal Fairness Security people for institutional sexism because I'm a man and so is XCOM's Central Officer. Neither of us is even homosexual. Seriously, John, what are you expecting me to do here?"

"Sir, we can't keep taking losses for political correctness. We're still losing people regularly to the rape rules."

"Yes – three more men removed from the roster and charged with rape this month, and three women on recuperative leave. I thought we'd sorted that one out? We agreed that the recruits from outside Europe and North America would have special introductory indoctrination sessions on the Swedish sexual conduct laws that apply here nowadays. They know they have to make sure they get a signed and witnessed consent from any women they want to fool about with, before each occasion." The Commander's eyes rolled. "It's not like in my youth, I'll tell you."

"The Grudges decided those consents aren't valid after all, sir. Something about an unequal power relationship and implied inappropriate pressure. I don't understand it myself, but the bottom line is that every time a couple of the operatives get caught frolicking, we lose two of them. The man goes to the brig and the woman has to go on mandatory recuperative leave with trauma counselling. It's just not sustainable, sir."

The Commander sat back, frowning. "Damnation! Sometimes I wonder if it's not Exalt and the Enemy Within that XCOM has to worry about. It's the Enemy In Charge that's going to do for us!"


End file.
